Mikhail Dudarev
Sunlight Seas
by Robert Walton

Ripple and surge
Across nylon walls,
And pine-shadow clouds
Drift there, too —
Swaying, soothing —
Just before I doze.
Both sons sleep already,
Free to slow down
In our tent’s dappled warmth,
Free from the cell phone scatter
Of young lives.
Just once
In this year of Covid
We share a nap
In Tuolumne.

PHOTO: Camp in the coniferous forest of the Yosemite National Park at night. Photo by Mikhail Dudarev.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I took my sons to the mountains, especially Yosemite’s mountains, to share beauty and adventure with them. We found more than I can ever say.

Walton

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Robert Walton retired from teaching after 36 years of service at San Lorenzo Middle School. He is a lifelong rock climber and mountaineer with ascents in Yosemite and Pinnacles National Park. He’s an experienced writer with published works, including historical fiction, science fiction, fantasy and poetry. Walton’s novel Dawn Drums won the 2014 New Mexico Book Awards Tony Hillerman Prize for best fiction. Sockdologizer,  his dramatization of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, won the Saturday Writers 2020 Everything Children contest. Most recently, his “Mansa Musa’s Wisdom” was published in Cricket Media’s February, 2022 issue of Spider magazine. Visit him at chaosgatebook.wordpress.com.

PHOTO: The author near the summit of Lembert Dome, Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite (July, 2009).